The most basic editor, that the majority of people have seen, is notepad. Windows' in house text editor, notepad, is not the most basic but is close. Here lies the essential fallacy about simple being best!

In effect, the only people likely to use a basic editor are experienced web masters and coding professionals. They do not need the assistance of extra buttons, tag correctors, syntax checkers or the other features of 'full featured' editors. In essence, if you have never done any html (let alone Javascript or css) coding before, then a basic editor most definitely is not for you!

The reason for including this section is to allow the listing of a 'lite' version of one of the commercial editors, as it is function limited (but still has quite a few buttons and bells).

The editor is Note Tab Lite from Fookes Software., the little brother of Note Tab Pro. This tool is free to download and use, and due to its installed features (nothing like as many as the Pro version) it is still good enough for someone just starting out at website building. You can produce a basic page, include graphics and do most of the things that a full featured editor would do. However you will have to find yourself a validator to check that it will all work according to plan - the plan being to display on Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla, the four main browsers. There is nothing like the thrill of seeing your carefully constructed masterpiece (on I/E) looking like a complete dog's dinner on the other three!

The thrill has been known to send me into the arms of Bacchus before now!

I would recommend downloading A Real Validator produced by Liam Quinn, for a 30 day trial evaluation. Liam Quinn features very heavily on the W3C website (the standards body for web languages) so should know what he is doing and his validator does. Take a copy of almost any web page and run it through the validator for the most wholesome collection of editing errors you are ever likely to see - even professional website builders make plenty of errors! (In my defense, I have got my pages down to 1 or 2 error messages - don't ask me how, but I have).

Apart from notepad, I have not used any other really lite or basic editors and wouldn't suggest that you do either, until you have reached a level of proficiency with the 'full' editors listed. Then it is quite helpful to quickly look at a page in notepad and perform a visual check for the blindingly obvious error you made in composing it! I call this my 'wood for trees' remedy.

** Remember to only edit a copy of your page on notepad, so that if you do make a change it doesn't irreversibly destroy your original! **